After reading "Canada" and "The Sportswriter", I have reached the conclusion that Richard Ford's writing simply fails to engage me. Both books struck me as dull and slow-paced, and surprisingly shallow given that the narrators are constantly engaged in intense navel-gazing. Perhaps it's a male perspective that eludes me, but I found none of Frank Bascombe's introspective musings to be revealing, enlightening, or in any way interesting.

Ford's use of repetition in the books I read seemed ineffective. In "Canada", the mother is described repeatedly, and in "The Sportswriter", the words "dreamy" and "mysterious" are used to the point of nausea. Ford attempts to persuade us that Frank is dreamy, but as a reader, I remained unconvinced. Frank appears to be an arrogant, somewhat misogynistic, possibly racist, and self-centered individual. The overuse of these words was so excessive that it made me want to pull my hair out. The use of the words "Negro" and "colored" also felt artificial and contrived to me. From what I could gather, the book seems to be set in the early 1980s, and Bascombe is a relatively young, college-educated man living on the east coast. Hardly the type of person to be using such terms in the 1980s. I suspect it was an attempt to show that Bascombe has racist tendencies (he also uses other derisive references), but it came across as forced and awkward.

Another linguistic issue that caught my attention was Frank's tendency to make assumptions about where certain types of people live. In one instance, he remarks that a house looks like one that a "tool&dye" manufacturer might inhabit. While it could be a minor oversight, considering one of the main themes of the book is stereotyping blue-collar workers and athletes, one would hope he would get the term right. Overall, if I'm in the mood to read about a creepy, misogynistic character who spends excessive time thinking about himself, I'll stick with Rabbit Angstrom. And if I'm seeking suburban angst, I'll turn to Yates or Cheever.

Ugh. While the writing in this book is indeed good, and it does have some insights, it completely failed to engage me. I have absolutely no interest in the protagonist. I wasn't cheering for him, nor was I hoping for his downfall. I simply didn't care about him or what happened to him. The book seemed to lack any sense of forward movement. It just plodded along without any real momentum. And in the end, no matter how excellent the writing may be, if a book can't capture the reader's interest, it's a failure. It's a real disappointment because there were elements that had the potential to be great, but they just didn't come together in a way that made me want to keep reading.

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford is an exceptional and complex book.

I had two reviews for this same book, and initially, my first encounter was a disaster. However, the second approach left me enchanted.

Undoubtedly, The Sportswriter is a reference point, having been included on the lists of best books of the century.

But I often wonder if I can trust my own judgment when it comes to certain books.

Sometimes, my mood or state of mind can influence how I perceive a book.

When I first started reading The Sportswriter, I was put off by its gloomy and tragic atmosphere.

I tend to avoid books that depict gruesome phenomena, fearing unhappiness and even fear itself.

Frank Bascombe's family is affected by the death of his younger son, Ralph, and the subsequent complications.

Frank is divorced, and on my second reading, I realized he is still upbeat.

He says that if he could change things, he would only have Ralph live and avoid the divorce.

This shows that he is grateful for what life has given him, including a beautiful, smart wife and two other great kids.

However, I'm not that thrilled by the wife, and I still don't fully understand Frank.

I also disagree with some of his choices and find some of the characters and events in the book arcane.

Despite this, I loved the two books by Richard Ford that I've read so far.

I'm considering reading The Lay of the Land by the same author soon to keep the characters fresh in my memory.

But the fact that it has so many pages is a bit of a nuisance.

In April 2013, I had a different view of The Sportswriter.

I thought it was on a black list for me, along with other books that I didn't connect with.

I had trouble getting immersed in The Sportswriter and found some developments awkward.

But there is a silver lining. I've discovered a series of psychology books that I find fascinating.

I've also started reading Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, which has been a shocking experience.

And I continue to enjoy reading a few pages at a time from A Question of Time, one of the best books I've ever read.

The Sportswriter is a complex and great book, and my thoughts on it have evolved over time.

This was an excellent book - a classic.

I never got around to it before when it first came out.

As someone described it - it's a literary "Seinfeld" - about a not too likeable man - should we say loser - to whom not too much happens.

But like Seinfeld, a LOT happens to the character and it's fascinating watching him unravel and then find enlightenment during an Easter weekend.

Frank Bascombe, at the beginning of the novel, is divorced. His son has been dead for 2 years. He's a sportswriter who, after success with one novel, decided to switch over temporarily from the great American novel to sportswriting.... and never went back.

Never have the wilds of suburban New Jersey (Haddam) been described so accurately (except perhaps in the Sopranos).

Frank's adventures can only be described as picaresque - like a modern day Tom Jones in a cultural and spiritual wasteland - told by a lying, spiritually bankrupt loser.

But yet... Frank's journey is entertaining and accurate - and in fact, by the end of the novel, he achieves a sort of redemption and inner peace.

No, he is not Mother Theresa - but it is in the banality of everyday life that he finds joy and meaning. Or at least Purgatory.

This book truly offers a unique and engaging exploration of a complex character's life and his search for something more. It makes the reader reflect on the ordinary yet profound aspects of our own existence.

The detailed descriptions of the suburban setting add to the authenticity and draw the reader into Frank's world.

Overall, it's a must-read for those who appreciate character-driven stories and a deeper look into the human condition.

Wise, but turgid.

This statement implies that there is a certain wisdom present, yet it is expressed in a rather pompous or overly elaborate manner. It seems that the person or thing being described has some valuable insights or knowledge, but the way it is conveyed might be a bit too convoluted or bombastic for some tastes.

However, the addition of "We'll meet again, some day" gives a sense of anticipation and perhaps a glimmer of hope. It suggests that despite the current perception of turgidity, there will be another opportunity in the future to encounter or engage with this wise entity.

Maybe that future meeting will provide a chance to see beyond the initial impression of pomposity and truly appreciate the wisdom that lies within. Or perhaps it will lead to a more refined and accessible expression of that wisdom, making it more palatable and useful to a wider audience.

Only time will tell what will come of this promised future meeting, but for now, we can hold onto the thought that there is still potential for something meaningful to emerge.

I just couldn't seem to get interested.

Every attempt to engage with the subject matter felt like a struggle.

The ideas presented simply didn't capture my attention or spark any curiosity within me.

I found myself constantly zoning out, my mind wandering to other things.

No matter how hard I tried to focus, it just wasn't happening.

Maybe it was the way the information was presented, or perhaps it was just not something that I had any natural inclination towards.

Whatever the reason, the fact remained that I couldn't get interested, and it was frustrating.

I knew that I should be making an effort, but it was as if there was an invisible barrier preventing me from truly connecting with the topic.

I hoped that something would change soon and that I would suddenly find myself engaged and eager to learn more.

Until then, I would just have to keep trying and hope for the best.

If there's another thing that sportswriting teaches you, it is that there are no transcendent themes in life. In all cases things are here and they're over, and that has to be enough. Frank Bascombe is full of such pronouncements. Whether they stem from epiphanies or dogmata isn't always clear. But he surely loves to opine on life and the world in short, yet not overly pithy, apothegms. It's a tiresome habit. But is it Frank Bascombe's or Richard Ford's?

If it's part of the narrator's personality, it rather absolves Richard Ford. The same holds true for the workaday prose. Adequate for the sportswriter of the title, but a touch dull for a Pulitzer Prize winner. I guess I'll have to peruse another Richard Ford novel to determine. I quite appreciate the fact that Frank Bascombe constantly juxtaposes the realities of life itself with the falsities of fiction. As a character in a novel, he's skating on thin ice with this. But Bascombe (or Ford) persists regardless.

It's okay. Babbitt and Rabbit are significantly more enjoyable to read. But it's okay. What's that, Frank? "Literature's consolations are always temporary, while life is quick to begin again." Okay. Thanks for that.

Another Anti-American Dream novel. This one much later than those written by Cheever or Yates. As with others, success is about position, status, or income. Here we have the Everyman being a Loser.

He doesn't want to be a huge success but rather skim comfortably in life as a journalist for a sports magazine. Set in the 1970s, it deals well with the disillusionment of aspirations all folks were encouraged to achieve: be a great sports person/hero, buy up big to be happy and so forth.

We are shown the challenges of failure. The injured sportsman and how his life has turned is very nicely done. He is a failure because he is no longer a whole person, he is broken. Thus, no one wants to know our fallen sportsman. Even our hero is a failure. He wasn't able to save his child that had a terminal genetic disease. The concept of failure is quite outrageous and we see Frank fail numerous times: not becoming a Pulitzer prized novelist, not retaining his lucrative college teaching position. His relationships are failures too. Over the Easter weekend, we shall see the disintegration of his girlfriend Vicki. Frank is not a whole person, still after grieving for the lost child and over the divorce. But still, Vicki is ideal. Vicki is that horrible suburban person who, along with the family, is striving for that American Dream. For them, it is still attainable and achievable. They are still sucking that tit of Consumerism.

I did have issues with Ford and some of his portrayals. The married man that comes out to him as gay, in a natural, very clumsy way, didn't need to be killed. It was very 1950s and I expected this character to go molest some child before the suicide. Women are also given a poor representation. Maybe I am projecting a 21st century mentality onto a late 20th Century novel. Nevertheless, the women are often portrayed as weak.

Maybe Ford is deliberately doing this. And if so, this makes it a truly great book. X, the ex-wife is just that, just a little more than a cypher, who may or may not be getting on with her life, or she just may be in the same flat-lining position in her life that Frank is. Vicki is just bloody awful, although her ideals and thoughts had me laughing. She is quite an air-head sometimes, aspiring to having only new things surrounding her.

The novel is written in the 1st person, and I think this works, as it unnerves the reader. Everything we encounter is very clearly filtered through his eyes. And his eyes are bleary, myopic and very biased. He is the epitome of the unreliable narrator. Are the Sports Magazine staff as horrible as made out? Is Vicki as plastic as she appears, or is it his projection? Is Walter such a boring caricature of a gay man lying to himself and society?

There are many digs to America. The little stings to organised religion. (I don't think there is any accident that it is set in Easter, and how the various churches are observing this solemn occasion border onto surreal.) There is the nod against science. (We now see that nod in US society is a big shake.) With Frank visiting a mystic to see how he is fairing mentally and emotionally. He is of course manipulated, where a doctor and psychiatrist would be far more helpful. Finally, there is the adoration of the hero, usually a sporting one, and often some minority that spruiked themselves to much greater heights. The men are often postulants to these heroes, but the women are often scathing and bitter. Finally, there is a stab at East Coast suburbia, particularly that large mass of humanity that is New Jersey and lower New York state, that mass that feeds New York each day. Interestingly, New York is called Gotham, as in Batman and other anti-New York tales.

Unlike Easter, there is no resurrection, and our Hero does not see an Apotheosis. I didn't really want him too, because in actuality he is our Fool that takes us on the Quest. In old tales, our Fool is redeemed with enlightenment, but there can be no enlightenment regarding this Great American Dream and the prizes it offers.

This book would feed a trilogy, but I don't think I shall read the others. Just as in TV series, the CEOs are not able to leave a stand-alone show and eventually wreck it, I feel the publishers are likely to have forced Ford to do the same thing. For me, everything was said in this book.

The Sportswriter is a novel that delves deep into the human psyche.

In the first chapter, there is a powerful scene that reveals the novel's essence. Frank Bascombe and his ex-wife, simply called X, return home after a night out to find their house in disarray. As they make a list of the missing items for the police, X discovers letters from another woman. Furious, she demands to know who the woman is. Frank remains silent, which only fuels X's anger.

X, already burdened by the death of her son, a failing marriage, and now this suspected infidelity, snaps. She destroys her hope chest and burns it in the fireplace.

The burglars had left Polaroid pictures of the empty house and spray-painted strange words on the wall. Ralph had been dead for two years, and the children were away. Frank, back from his teaching job, was in a somewhat numb state but otherwise in decent spirits.

The novel begins on Good Friday with Frank and X visiting their son's grave and ends on Easter Sunday with Frank making a pass at a college girl in his office. It's a story where not much seems to happen on the surface, but every event is filled with a sense of failure.

There are various incidents that highlight Frank's detachment and inability to connect. X's destruction of the hope chest, Frank's botched interview with a paraplegic footballer, his uncomfortable visit to his girlfriend's parents' house, and the loss of the only copy of his first novel.

Easter, a day of supposed miracles, only emphasizes the harsh reality of Frank's life. Miracles don't happen, and sins remain unforgiven.

One of the novel's greatest strengths is its exploration of male friendship. Through the Divorced Men's Club, Frank meets Walter Luckett. Walter confides in Frank, but Frank knows that true friendship means not asking too many questions.

Later, at the police station, Frank struggles to find something to say to the sergeant. He realizes that sometimes, saying nothing is exactly what he wants from a friend.

The Sportswriter is a thought-provoking look at a man who is adrift in a world he doesn't fully understand.

Awful! The self-absorbed baby boomer in this story muses about life and sports in a completely unintelligible way. Most of the time, I had no clue what the main character was talking about. The dialogue was terrible and almost incoherent.

And every single time the main character noticed someone whose ethnicity was other than white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP), he would point it out. There was the "Polack" football player, the "Negro" cabdriver (seriously, "Negro" in 1986?), and the Irish cop. This was not only anachronistic but also extremely irritating.

Maybe you have to be a self-obsessed baby boomer yourself to appreciate this book, not the child of one. Or perhaps it was just too male-centric? The ex-wife doesn't even have a name - the dude just refers to her as "X" throughout the entire thing! And the kids, even the dead kid, are treated as afterthoughts and are barely mentioned.

There was all this talk about feelings, but there was no real introspection or thought to back up the author's constant insistence that the dude was "dreamy," whatever that's supposed to mean. I truly hope the narcissistic baby boomer genre is over, just like chick lit. Because if you're going to write about that generation and make it interesting and sympathetic, it needs to be done with irony, like in Franzen's "The Corrections."

Reminiscent of Updike's Rabbit series, The Sportswriter is the typical "midlife crisis" novel. I am certain that there are numerous people who would take pleasure in this book, yet I am not among them. (I also did not have an affinity for "Rabbit Run", the sole one of those that I managed to get through.) While many of the characters in this novel are interesting, I never felt that I delved deeper than a superficial glance at any of them. They are mostly wretched. And ordinary. And wretchedly ordinary, with ordinary lives and ordinary shortcomings. Like many books that originate from the "I know how to write because I got an MFA in Complete Sentences" school of fiction, the prose failed to engage me beyond the mere fact that there were words on a white sheet of paper. There is no real acuity to the narrator's observations. It all feels rather nebulous and tiresome. In fact, the main character's narration makes him seem bored with his existence. Yes, there is a reasonable amount of existential dread, but even this comes across as overly matter-of-fact. I felt that the author never truly explored the profound depths of the human soul, the place where naughty thoughts of violence and sex prevail. Instead, we only scratch the surface, which is mild, lukewarm, and safely bland.

Oh, and there is very little humor that I could perceive.

Beautiful writing.

This was like reading an Edward Hopper painting.

The words seemed to paint a vivid picture in my mind, filled with loneliness, sadness, and yet, an undeniable beauty.

Loneliness, that feeling of being alone in a crowd or in a vast empty space, was palpable.

The sadness, like a gentle breeze, blew through the text, touching my heart.

And the beauty, it was in the details, in the way the author described the emotions and the scenes.

It was like a hidden gem, waiting to be discovered.

Reading this was like taking a journey into a world of emotions, a world that was both familiar and陌生.

It made me feel things I had never felt before, and it made me see the world in a different light.

Overall, it was a truly remarkable piece of writing that left a lasting impression on me.